ISLAMABAD, Sept 19: Languages and linguistics must be used as an effective tool for enhancing literacy in the country, said Dr Ruqaiya Hasan, a visiting Australian scholar, at the National University of Modern Languages here on Monday.

Dr Hasan, who spoke on “Pedagogy, Social Change and the Concept of Literary”, said the people of Pakistan were reasonable and intelligent, but they were not given the opportunity to understand their country. “Life for them could be better if they were allowed to change,” she said.

This responsibility mainly devolved on teachers. They should educate people in use of language as a source of power to ensure permanence in social changes, because it was imperative for living societies to undergo change with time, the scholar said.

Only dead cultures resist changes and such societies then live in designated reserve areas, the scholar said, highlighting the fact that social changes were wrought with changes made in education system designed to endow people with practical knowledge as well to cope with daily problems of a living society.

The world had changed enormously during the last 50 years and teaching systems had now been reduced to an instrument of ideological control and giving rise to a malaise of Disassociated Identities in culture and introduced the detrimental capital system.

Whereas at one time, universities played a role in improvement of languages, which led to tremendous trickle down effect on literacy growth. The prevailing trend now seen is that universities concentrate on accumulating money through charges from students and through endowments, Dr Hasan said.

In fact modern universities worked for producing more money than knowledge, the scholar observed.

In this context, Dr Hasan also mentioned the bane of globalization which, she said, was a gimmick. It does not act to put poor countries on the path to prosperity, but is a source of pronounced exploitation of human labour.

One way ahead is to accept an ideology of change, provided it took into account life in an interlinked community, and eschewed changes the society did not like. “We must also plan a language module aimed at increasing relationship with each other in preference to rote learning,” the scholar said.

Dr Hasan advised Pakistanis to use knowledge as an intellectual capital in a way that linguistic diversity was not exploited, and to sensitize students and teachers to use literacy for the purpose of effecting social changes in the community.

Dr Ruqaiya Hasan is a professor emeritus at Macquarie University in Australia and also vice-president of Australian Languages Society. She is also the author of 10 books and 30 scholarly papers on languages and linguistics. — Jonaid Iqbal